America’s Color Grading Mania and its Influence Over the World II

… continuing Color.

Color, has always been associated to states of mind, or even emotional reactions purported through imagination and art.

Some blatant examples of color saturation in movies, create a certain emphatic response to those movies, and moreover make them temporal classics of world cinema history (movies like Wizard of Oz, The Godfather or even Farewell my Concubine).

Each color has its own value on the screen.

I will only use the 3 most prominent colors in film (Red, Green Blue), and further ad their influence and manipulation through the changing of opposite/contrast colors (different palette selection and adulteration or the Cyan/Teal, Magenta, Yellow evolution of the 3 color scheme).

To further understand the influence that color can have in film, and how its manipulation in American cinema has changed our perception of Movies (and further, wrongly adulterate and distort the films of the rest of the World), I will briefly exemplify how the 3 main colors influence us the audience when presented with extreme saturation of the selected visuals on the screen.

Red is a color that, when used correctly in a movie, can increase the dynamic response of the public to what they’re seeing, can encourage the emotional and physical side of the audience to accept what they see in the screen, and is a vastly and a almost instantaneously identified color. It is also the color of power and manipulation, and through its variations of orange tinges can be a more subdued and a innocent emotional triger, or with its stronger purple/pink addition become a fatal and sometimes extreme danger warning (in Run Lola Run its perfectly exemplified as a emotional trigger for the audience, and as a pattern of uncontrollable power and speed expressed “by” Franka Potente) .

Green is the color that our eyes are most in tune with. Millenia of evolution in the wilderness has made the human retina capable of identifying and subtle and extreme variations of this chromatic element and hence it is one that is very carefully structured and presented in movies.

As a color, vibrant, saturated green can motivate and increase the audiences sense of direction/attention in a movie. It can pop out extremely in the screen or if carefully manipulated, can blend into the background without us noticing it, but being intensely influenced by its presence. It can represent thoughtfulness, intelligence or disambiguation, or when small quantities of blue are added to the original color, can mean peace, and relaxation, and safety.

Shocking green can motivate envy, fear or the uncommon reactions to a poison that is seen but not felt (contortion of the muscles, skin irritations and increased palpitations).

It is a very diatomic color, symbolizing the ambiguity of trust and doubt, safety and danger, pain and relief.

Blue on the other hand, is one of the most abstract colors in film.

Depending on how the filmmaker develops his chromatic symbolic on the screen, blue can be used as an inhibitor or a restricting element of the frame. It means knowledge and can represent visual infinity. As a strong color, it is mainly used to declare itself as clean and pure, pushing contrast to every other color in the screen.

A lot more can be represented and studied over the influence of these 3 colors (and many books have been written on the subject), but it is with these main emotional triggers on us, that these 3 colors are mainly used and abused in films.

Furthermore, these 3 colors have in the visual spectrum, 3 other specific and direct contrasting colors, creating then, by groups of 2, very strong chromatic relationships that are, perfectly balanced in modern day cinema.

These 3 primary colors (RGB) combined with the secondary spectrum of color (CMY), give us a color palette and wheel of combinations that can transmit or detract from the image, emotions and reactions, all dependent on the knowledge or power of those who correct films during the post production work-flow (further enhancing the message of the story visualized during the film).

On of the most famous, recent, adulterations in American film that has transfused itself into mainstream international cinema is the dual correction of the Teal/Orange palette, homogenizing the American blockbuster to a visual style that satisfies a wide and carefully selected audience.

This color swatch (the Teal/Orange color combination) and image distortion principle it portrays is based on the peacefulness and infinitely possible distortion of the combination of these 2 secondary colors, that by being directly connected without (almost) no use of the Green visual section of the spectrum (but rather “connect themselves to our tuning of the color, and further create a more physical and hence innate affinity to the combination), augment the audience’s attention over what is presented on the screen ( increasingly being that since green is the most easily identifiable color on the screen, its two complimentary colors, will be “blessed” with an immense power over our perception of the chromatic reflections on screen).

This attention is then further enhanced with visually saturated elements (red and orange explosions and exuberant blues), that constantly attract the audience to the screen, without being able to avert their eyes to what is happening.

The problem with this is that the Teal/Orange combination that appears on our screens is an adulteration of our percepted reality. Its a fake, manipulated and abused distortion.